Just Say That You Were Happy
by CitronPresse
Summary: -- The surprise party thing. Why do you hate them? -- Character: Mark; pairing Mark/Lexie. One shot set immediately post episode 6.08.


A/N: written for the prompt "Mark, surprise party," as part of the Mark and Lexie Drabble-a-thon, hosted on livejournal by littleone87.

* * *

"So what was it?" Lexie whispers level with your neck. She's curled up next to you, hand tucked into yours.

"What was what?" You were on the point of falling asleep.

"The surprise party thing. Why do you hate them?" She laughs. You can feel her breath against your skin; the little vibrations of her body against yours. "Some awful childhood trauma involving a noisemaker?"

You snort a soft laugh through your nose. "I'll have you know I've never met a noisemaker I couldn't take in a fight," you say. But there's an edge to it that you can't quite hide.

She's happy, post-orgasmic, a little worse the wear for alcohol in the cutest possible way. But Lexie's always alert at some level and immediately she's up on one elbow, peering at you with concern. "Was there? Something?" The teasing has left her voice and she's all earnest seriousness now. "Something real? Did something happen to you?"

"Nothing happened to me," you say, wishing you could get the roughness out of your voice. "They're just a bad idea, that's all. Like I said, they never come to any good."

You pull her closer and she snuggles against you. But there's a hesitation there, a slight reluctance. And even though she places a few soft kisses on your chest, you know she's still thinking and eventually she says,

"You can talk about it. If you want to."

"Nothing happened, Lexie. I'm serious."

She sighs.

"You don't give up, do you?" You're trying to sound playful.

She shakes her head.

"So, if I tell you," her head lifts up a little, alert again, "you have to promise not to laugh."

"It's funny?" she asks, surprised and possibly a little relieved.

"For everyone else," you say dryly.

"So what happened?" The same question, but curiosity has replaced the understanding concern in her voice.

You relax a little. She's buying the cover story. "Addison threw me a surprise party for my twenty-third birthday. I arrived home and turned on the lights and there's all these people waiting in the dark and they jump out." You sigh. You hate that part, even when you're making up a lie to please Lexie.

"Poor baby," she says (half teasing, half comforting) and rubs your arm.

You plant a kiss in her hair. "You don't know the half of it," you say. "'Cause Addison likes to do these things _big_. So everyone we knew was there."

"It sounds fun!" she breathes. The debacle with Arizona hasn't cured her of her seven-year-old delight at these god-awful events.

"Everyone _including_ the five women I was screwing. Three of whom were best friends - at least, they were before the party. All of whom thought they were my girlfriend."

"Seriously?" You can't see her eyes well in the near dark, but you know they're huge right now.

"Seriously. The fight was" you shudder meaningfully, "horrible."

She wriggles her body closer to yours and lies back down, laughing to herself all the while.

"Happy now?" you ask her.

"Mmhmm." She nods against your arm. "You're such a slut, Mark," she says dreamily, enjoying the concept as she settles down to sleep.

Of course, it never happened. Well, it did, but to Archer Montgomery, not you.

The truth is, there _was_ a childhood (trauma is over-stating it) disappointment.

You kept trying with your parents. They ignored you and palmed you off on babysitters and, when they couldn't get anyone, just left you by yourself. You were superfluous in their lives; an inconvenience. They were your whole world, though and you kept trying.

So when you were almost seven and your father asked what you'd like for your birthday (by which he meant a gift that he wouldn't watch you unwrap or, preferably, the money to buy yourself something) you asked for a party. You painstakingly wrote out a list of the kids you wanted to invite (you only had four friends and you didn't really know them all that well, but you wanted them at your birthday party) and handed him the page of finger-dirtied childish scrawl.

"Hmmm," he'd said, putting the paper in the pocket of his dress pants without reading it.

Even at that age, you understood reality and you pretty much got that your request was a lost cause. But there was a part of you that hoped: imagined five little kids in your parents' well-kept, joylessly huge backyard eating cake, getting dirty, playing games that didn't require imagination because there'd be someone else to share them with.

Of course, it all came to shit.

You spent all day at school on your seventh birthday wondering why your teacher was the only person who knew about it; red-faced with shame when the other children chorused, "Happy Birthday, Mark," out of group duty.

You trailed home on the bus, walked past today's sitter without a word and went up to your room. There were toys there and a TV and, really, what most kids would probably kill for. But you ignored them all and sat on your bed and sulked. It was the most you allowed yourself, because you prided yourself on being a boy. You must've fallen asleep, and when you woke it was dark and your mom was standing over you.

"Your father wants to see you," she said, weirdly dispassionate even for her.

There was this surge of bitterness in your chest (God, you can still feel it now). _He_ was pissed at _you_? The fucking injustice of it! He couldn't even give you a goddamn birthday party (couldn't give you any kind of a fucking _life_) and he had the gall to be angry at you?

You sighed and slumped off the bed, following her out of the room and down the stairs, turning instinctively towards the study. But your mom was heading for the dining room.

She turned back and raised an eyebrow. "This way," she said (there might even have been a smile on her face) and, obediently, you changed direction.

When she flung the door open, the room was completely dark. Dark and quiet. And then it erupted. Noise and congratulations and smiles from what looked like a hundred people who might as well have been one giant monster.

You just stood there gaping, until your mom nudged you and said, "Do you like your surprise party, Mark?" Her voice (replayed) was affectedly excited and kind: she was showing off for her friends. But you didn't notice that at the time.

You had, stupidly, gotten your hopes up and you scanned the room for the four kids on your list.

They weren't there. Apart from your parents and one of your sitters and her (you now know) stoner boyfriend, no one you knew was there at all. It was a sea of business suits and cocktail dresses with over-dressed little kids interspersed in the crowd who didn't look any happier to be there than you were.

It was hostile. The hostility swamped you. Like everything else, this had nothing to do with you and everything to do with your parents and the hopes you'd just gotten up (and any you had before) were decisively dashed.

All you'd wanted was a birthday party, like other kids had. But that was never going to happen. What you got instead was this scary, fucked-up charade.

You didn't want the elaborate birthday cake your mother pushed under your nose, smiling in a way that freaked you out and stung you at the same time. You thought, if you ate anything, you'd just throw up and you didn't want to give yourself away.

So you sulked, scuffing your feet against the polished floor, saying _thank you_ listlessly when the people you didn't know and didn't want to wished you, "Happy Birthday," and _I guess_ (because that was the best you could do without lapsing into humiliating tears) when they said, "Aren't you lucky."

It still humiliates you; it's still an acute disappointment; it still hurts and you kind of hate yourself that you let it.

You'd tell Lexie anything. Almost. But you can't bring yourself to tell her this one. She comes from a world where seven year olds have surprise parties that are the best birthdays of their lives. And sometimes it's just a whole lot nicer sharing her world than dragging her down into yours.


End file.
